Eat Chocolate to Prevent Obesity?

Fans of dark chocolate are quick to point out the ever increasing benefits of their vice of choice. Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. Dark chocolate decreases appetite. Dark chocolate improves thinking. Now the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry is reporting dark chocolate may help prevent obesity and even type-2 diabetes.

Andrew Nelson and colleges are tracking down the health benefits of various flavanol molecules. They fed groups of lab mice high-fat, low-fat diets and high-fat supplemented with different flavanols. One group with the supplemented diet containing oligomeric procyanidins (or PCs) helped keep the mice’s weight down. This diet also helped increase glucose tolerance: a key factor in the prevention of type-2 diabetes.